How to be Badass (2nd Draft)

“Daddy,” Allen stood in the doorway to his father’s room, holding onto the door jam and looking at the floor. He could feel the tears gathering in his eyes but tried to fight them.

“Yes, Allen?” His father’s voice was gentle, and it made Allen feel a bit better.

“I don’t want to go today.”

“Why not?”

“I think—I think they make me kill people, daddy.” The tears grew more insistent, and a couple slipped out of his waterline. His hands tightened on the door jam. “I—I see, sometimes.”

“Come here,” Allen’s dad said, and Allen felt a brief pang, feeling as if something was missing at the end of the sentence. Pumpkin, his dad used to call him. Sweet pea. Allie-pie.

Still, Allen did as he asked, walking without hesitation into his dad’s waiting arms. It felt unaccountably wonderful to be held by his father; it was a safe place, a good place. He breathed out, letting his tears soak into his father’s shirt and run dry, and then breathed in, his dad’s scent almost as good as his arms.

“I know it’s hard to do this,” he said to him, and Allen nodded into his shoulder. “But we’re doing this for mom, right? Every time you go and do this, it’s keeping her alive. You want to keep mom alive, don’t you? You wouldn’t let her die?”

“No,” Allen said. “Of course not.”

“That’s my boy,” his dad said, smoothing his hair down. “Now go get something to eat before we go. You need your strength.”

“Hi,” Queri said, trying to seem tentative as she walked inside the psychiatric hospital, meekly approaching the front desk. Her quick google search had accomplished nothing. As far as the internet was concerned, the place didn’t exist. If she didn’t find anything herself today, she’d have to call up Fay and see what she could dig up.

The place absolutely stank of demonic possession. The lady behind the desk looked up at Queri. “Hello,” she said. “We’re not currently taking patients.”

“Oh,” Queri said, taken aback. Her mind raced, trying to find a way to farm information without getting thrown out. Well, actually, getting thrown out wouldn’t be that much of a problem so long as they didn’t report her to the police. “Well, that’s alright. I’m only here to visit an existing patient.”

“To visit a patient,” the woman said slowly.

“Yes,” Queri said. “I’m afraid that can’t be possible, miss.”

“Why not?”

“None of the patients here have any friends, or family.”

“I am a lawyer on a case and I am here to conduct an interview,” Queri clarified. Or at least, she hoped it came across as clarification.

The woman blinked at her, slowly, as if trying to figure out what to do with that information. “I see,” she said with equal deliberation. “Who is it you were hoping to see?”

Ah yes, the ultimatum. She gritted her teeth. “The identity must be kept confidential, you understand. It’s a requirement of client confidentiality. As my client doesn’t have a name, only a face, I have a police sketch and will have to identify the patient myself.”

Horse shit, utter horse shit. At this point Queri was relying on the ignorance most people had of the law, and hoping that if they did smell her horse shit they chalked it up to her being insane (she was in a psychiatric hospital) and threw her out without any more fuss.

“I’m afraid no one is allowed in without a warrant,” the woman said suddenly, and Queri sighed internally.

“I suppose I’ll have to see if I can rustle one of those up, then,” Queri said, and turned and walked out.

She walked out, but it hadn’t been a complete waste after all. A patient had walked by with a nurse, and over the top of the dressing gown Queri was sure that she had seen the distinctive patterns of a demonslaying tattoo.

Completely still.

It wasn’t a lot to go off of, but it did confirm her now-gloating suspicions.

This had something to do with Allen.

Queri’s mind was still solidly in an uproar when she returned, again, to the hotel, take out food in hand. She had been hoping that getting food would calm her but her mind was quite determined to keep mulling this over in an energetic state until a solution was provided.

Fortunately, a solution was waiting for her when she opened the hotel room door.

Unfortunately, the solution was M, immaculate in slacks and a button-up rolled up his forearms.

Oh, right. She was angry at him.

Marching up to him, discarding the food on the bed, Queri stabbed him in the chest with a finger. “Safe, you said,” she yelled, glaring up at him and his stupid, lazy smirk. “This is the opposite of safe! This is the hottest demonic coal bed I’ve ever found,” stab for emphasis, “and if I’m right, it’s even controlled by the same operation that’s trying to get,” stab, “a hold,” stab, “of Izzy! It is not safe!”

“Ho boy, slow down, tiger,” M said, pushing her hand from his chest deftly. “You can’t be seriously telling me you’re not glad you found this place.”

“Not with a six year old!” Queri screeched.

“I’m almost seven,” Izzy muttered.

“Look,” M said. “I steered you in this direction so that you would understand what you’re up against. That’s why you’re angry, isn’t it? You’re afraid. This is larger than anything you’ve ever seen before.”

Queri balled her fists at her sides, ready to retaliate, but—he was right. It was disarming, how right he was. She deflated. “I didn’t get enough take out for three,” Queri said numbly.

“That’s okay,” said M. “I just ate.”

“What did you get?” Izzy asked, craning her neck.

“Chinese food,” Queri told her. “Why did you let him in?”

“You said all half demons aren’t bad,” Izzy said. “And I was bored.”

This child was going to be the death of her.

“What do you want?” Queri asked M. “Kung pao chicken?” she asked Izzy.

Izzy nodded, and M said, “I’ll have some fried rice.” Queri glared at him, and M put his hands up in mock surrender. “I want the same thing I did last time. To make a deal with you.”

Queri wanted to punch him.

But she thought about the hospital, and she thought about Izzy, and she thought about how Dustin trusted M, and she thought about how M hadn’t hurt them or given them away, yet.

This was too big for her to tackle alone. And if M knew what was going on…

I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned that M worked for the same operation that is doing all this??? I also need to figure out what, exactly, has been happening between M and Dustin… Like, I know the basics, but screw the basics… I guess I’ll do that once I’ve finished this draft. I’m also under the impression that M’s in a bound deal with Kryos but that he somehow got himself some wiggle room that’s allowing him to do what he’s doing right now??? Dunno, need to figure that shit out. Dammit M, making everything more complicated than it originally was.

“I have rules,” Queri said, and M’s face broke out into a victorious grin.

“Of course,” he said smoothly.

“No possessions. And I want to draw up a legal agreement that will allow me to have some leverage over your human identity.”

M’s head tilted forwards in graceful acquiescence.

“And I want Char to draw up a ritual that will keep you bound to your word not to give our information to your boss,” Queri added sharply.

Something flickered over M’s expression, but it cleared so quickly that she didn’t catch it. He tapped one finger on the desk beside him lightly. “I suppose that is acceptable.”

Queri blew out a breath. “Okay. What do you want, then?”

M blinked, as if he wasn’t prepared for the question, which was bullshit. “A place to stay,” he said without hesitation. “A safehouse, if you will. I will find you a safe place to live away from demonic activity, and a job at a firm, and in return you will allow me to use the safety I have granted you for my own purposes of being away from demons.”

That was… unexpected, and Queri wasn’t a fan of the idea of having the snarky half demon living with her part time, but she gritted her teeth and said, “Is that all?”

“No,” M said. “I’d also like you to be an operative for me. As a half demon of… some renown, there are simply some things I cannot do. You are human, and you’re a demonslayer, so you are both capable and informed.”

Queri liked that even less. “Do I get a say in which… missions… I do and don’t take?”

M tilted his head. “Are you worried I’m going to make you do something morally unsound, dear?”

Queri scowled at him by way of response.

“No, you won’t get a choice, but only if you want to continue recieving information about the operation,” M said. “I can’t force you to do anything, and it’s bloody complicated to bind wills in a ritual and I don’t want to deal with that.”

Queri’s insides squirmed a bit at the concept of her will being bound to that of a half demon. “Okay. Fine. I’ll call up Char tonight, and you will tell me where Izzy and I can go by the end of the week. In the meantime, tell me what you can about Amy’s Psychiatric Hospital.”

“So bossy,” M said, cocking an eyebrow. “At least ask me if I would like to sit down first.”

“Sit down,” Queri ordered. M rolled his eyes, but did so.

“What would you like to know?” he asked, reclining graciously in the desk chair.

“Queri,” Izzy said.

“What?” Queri said, looking over at her distractedly.

“I want the food.”

Oh, right. The food.

“Do you think you could serve yourself?” Queri asked her politely.

Izzy looked quite pleased with this idea, and nodded before hopping off the bed to collect the take out containers and dispense them somewhere less infested with adults.

Turning back to M, Queri sorted through her thoughts systematically, trying to farm out well-worded questions that would give her the information she wanted quickly and efficiently. “How did the patients end up there?”

M looked pleased and Queri couldn’t figure out for the life of her why. So she just crossed her arms and waited. “Their minds have been broken by demonic possession,” he said.

“Every single one of them?” She had suspected, but having it confirmed was worse.

“Yes,” M said. “My turn. What level of demonslayer are you and your merry men?”

“Merry men,” Queri said in disbelief. “That isn’t how this is supposed to work.”

“I’m curious,” said M. “Indulge me.”

“Merry women,” Queri muttered, and then said, “Mimi’s a level six. Fay and I are level fives. Sparrow and Kidd are level fours. Char isn’t a demonslayer.”

M looked askance at her at the last bit. “Is she not?”

“My turn,” Queri said firmly. M raised a hand as if to say by all means. “Do they all have still tattoos?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“They’re… lead up experiments, let’s say. The goal was Allen. They are what came before him,” M said, and the way he said it gave Queri a chill, though she couldn’t put her finger on why.

“Are they all still being used for possessions the same way Allen was?” Queri pressed.

“Tsk, my turn, remember?” M said, crossing his arms over his chest. Queri gave him a long look until he continued on. “What demon do you have in dormant possession?”

“Stillness,” Queri snapped quickly. “Mine, now, please.”

“Yes, they are,” M said. “I believe any of them that were too volatile for use were discarded. These ones are kept around solely to be used. Much higher maintenence than a vessel that’s fully functional when not possessed, but undeniably still a valuable asset.”

Queri was sure her disgust was showing on her face. This was horrendous. “So who runs the hospital?”

“Demons,” M said smoothly.

“What happened to your turn?” Queri asked, M looked amused.

“Does that count as another question?”

“No,” Queri snapped.

“I’m teasing,” M said, his voice still mocking. “Why is Char part of your… guild… if she is not a demonslayer?”

“I fail to see how that’s any of your business,” Queri said.

“My nature is to pry, what can I say.”

“Sorry.”

“That’s quite okay.”

Queri was pretty sure she was going to kill this man, deal or no. She had to believe he was unfuriating on purpose. There was no way someone could be this much of an ass on accident. “Fuck you,” she summed up.

M laughed, his amusement apparently genuine. “Don’t you have someone else to do that sort of thing with?”

Queri felt herself flush, and then said in a dangerously low voice, “How do you know that?”

M simply shrugged elegantly. “I have my sources.”

“You have your sources,” Queri said flatly. “You know that Mimi and I are in a relationship, but you don’t know what levels we are?”

“I never said my sources were perfect.” M twitched a fold of his sleeve into a slightly different position.

“Fine, whatever,” Queri said. Though she was far from letting it go, she knew she wasn’t going to get M to admit anything useful concerning it. “Tell me how that hospital is run by demons, then.”

M continued to neaten the folds of his sleeves, probably buying time for thought. “An age old rule that demonslayers have taken to be law has been… surpassed,” he finally said, carefully.

“What’s with the crypticism all the sudden?” Queri asked. It was dawning on her that she was starving. It was distracting her, a bit, from her interogation.

“Your non-demonslayer isn’t the only one who can make rituals to bind me,” M said, glancing up at her slantwise with such a cocky tilt to his jaw that Queri thought, oh, this is bravado.

“Who bound you?” she asked coldly. “I feel that you should have mentioned this earlier.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It doesn’t affect my ability to hold up my end of this deal.”

“It does if it stops you from properly giving me information.”

“Oh, you’re a clever young thing, you’ll figure it out,” M said, slightly more snappy than Queri had ever heard him, and she raised an eyebrow, wondering if she had hit a nerve.

Queri said, “It seems like demons are breaking all sorts of ’law’s,” she put air quotes around the word, “lately. Possessing without permission was supposed to be impossible. What’s this one?”

“Think about it,” M murmured, bowing his head a bit.

Queri did. It wasn’t really that hard to pin down; there had been one common denominator that had haunted every single one of the questions that she and the others had asked since these problems began, and it was simple—how were the demons orchestrating all this if they weren’t able to stay in this world for longer than a few, blood-frenzied minutes?

So she ventured, “Possessing someone for… longer periods of time? And remaining calm while doing so.”

M swallowed noticeably, and Queri assumed she was right. “Some are half demons,” he added, voice soft.

“Fucking hell,” she muttered, sitting down on the edge of the bed. She wanted to bury her head in her hands, but wouldn’t so long as the unsufferable prick was around. She wondered how long ‘longer’ was.

“I’m going to call home,” Queri announced. “I trust you can show yourself out.”

“Hi,” Char said, slightly breathless as she picked up the phone. She was breathless because she’d had to run halfway across the house when she’d heard it ringing; she’d left it in her room in order to avoid distractions but had the thing bluetoothed to her speakers in her office for music.

Consequently, a sprint across the house when it started ringing.

She hadn’t even glanced at who it was before picking up so she added, “[Tattoo shop name],” as an afterthought.

“What? Char, it’s just me.” Ah, that was Queri’s voice.

“Oh!” Char said, both incredibly glad to hear her voice and a little disappointed it wasn’t Em. “Sorry, didn’t look at the contact before picking up. I had to run across the house to make it before it went to voicemail as it is.” She sucked in a deep breath. “What’s up? Any luck finding somewhere to settle?”

“Uh,” Queri said, and Char sat down on her bed abruptly. If Queri was using filler words, something big had just happened. “So I found a huge demonic hot bed that we’re going to need to clear out.”

“Oh,” Char said. “I see.” She paused for a second, and then said, “Not that I’m not glad you called me, but why did you call me and not Mimi? Why tell me first?”

“I already called Mimi and told her about it. I’m calling you because I had to make a deal to get that information,” Queri said shortly. “With M.”

It took a second for the implications of that to hit Char, but when she did, she moaned a little bit. “You did what? I’m so—I thought you were too smart and—and—lawful for that! Fuck, I didn’t mean that to sound as bad as it did. I mean, if you felt that that was the best move to make then I trust you but… goddamn it, Queri.”

Queri sighed. “I know.”

“Tell me what happened, then,” Char said, scooching up on the bed and making herself comfortable against the headboard. She played with one of the sheets she had hanging from a line across her bed to make it a tent as she waited for Queri to explain.

“M showed up the first night I left and tried to make a deal,” Queri started. “I refused, for the obvious reasons. He left, but he also said something about going to [city] so I decided to check it out. For obvious reasons.” Char nodded, even though Queri couldn’t see her. “It was awful. There were more possessions there than I’d ever sensed before. I managed to track some of the vessels after the possessions. They all lead back to the same place. This psychiatric hospital. I… tried to get in. They completely blocked me, but not before I saw a patient being brought in and the edge of the demonslaying tattoo on their back.”

“Let me guess,” Char cut in, apprehension curling in her gut sickeningly. “It wasn’t moving.”

“No,” Queri confirmed.

“Fuck,” said Char.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought too. But I couldn’t get back in, at least not during the day and not, uh, legally, so I left and when I got back to the hotel Izzy and I were staying at, M was there.”

“Like, in your apartment?”

“Yeah,” Queri said, sounding exhasperated. “Izzy let him in. Said she was bored.”

Char snorted despite herself. “Okay. Continue.”

“He offered me the deal again.” Char could maybe understand taking the deal at that point. She gnawed on her lip. “You weren’t there, and you know I hate going by gut instinct but something was so wrong Char and we’ve never gone up against something this big before. And I needed to protect Izzy. M is going to find us a safe place to live, and he’s going to feed us information. And you’re going to draw up a ritual to bind him to us so that he can’t sell us out.” Char made a noise of appreciation. “I’ll get started on that right away, then. What did you give him return?”

“He wanted to be able to stay with us when he needed to lay low,” Queri said. “And for me to be a little operative for him.”

“Ugh,” said Char, although it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as he could have asked. Though she didn’t know how far Queri would go to accept.

“Yeah. Anyways, think you can let everyone else know?” Queri asked.

Char nodded before saying, “Yeah, yeah, for sure. But what about the hospital?”

“M told me about it,” Queri said. “I already filled Mimi in about it.” That was short for ‘go ask Mimi, I don’t feel like explaining again’.

“Okay,” said Char.

The line was quiet for a moment, and then Queri said, “If you’re going to see your kid, I’d suggest doing it before we get deeper into this mess.”

Char hadn’t told anyone she was planning on seeing her kid. Her heartbeat felt too big for her chest. “How did you know?”

“I followed you when you left that message in the hospital,” Queri said. “You looked really upset so I didn’t want to just let you know but… I realized it was something private after you started speaking. So I didn’t come out. But I heard.”

“Oh,” Char said, picking at a bit of pilling on the sheet-tent. “You could have said something sooner.” I could have used the support.

“Sorry,” Queri said, and it was filled with Queri’s trademark genuity. “I wasn’t sure if it was something you wanted to go alone or not.”

“I’ll call Em, then,” Char said. “After we decide what we’re going to do.”

Allen had to stay up the rest of the night in order to keep the demon under control, and so he spent the rest of the night refining his repossession until it was about as efficient as it could be.

The next morning Allen made a point of being in the kitchen and eating his breakfast when Kidd was getting ready to go to work. When she saw Allen at the table, eating cream of wheat with all the angelic aura he could muster, she narrowed her eyes. Slowly, eyes still crusted with sleep, she said, “I don’t know how. I don’t—I don’t know how. But somehow this is your fault.”

“What’s my fault?” Allen asked innocently, and Kidd only narrowed her eyes further. Allen put a hand to his mouth to stop himself from bursting out laughing, but it was entirely possible that the smile in his eyes have him away anyways, because Kidd just threw her hands up in the air and left the kitchen. “Don’t you want breakfast?” Allen called after her.

“If I have to wear fucking sandals to work I’m going to beat you!” Kidd yelled back, and Allen dissolved into a helpless peal of laughter.

And that was how Mimi found him, doubled over in his chair, cream of wheat forgotten, and she touched his hand to banish the demon. Allen sighed when she did, immediately realizing how exhausted—and starving—he was. He grabbed the bowl and started shovelling the food in like it was the last thing he would ever eat.

“Common side-effect of repossession,” Mimi said. “You don’t feel your body’s needs as accutely. Something to do with having a demon who can’t feel it sharing the space with you.”

Allen grunted, not particularly caring at the moment.

“We’re going to go see Queri. She found something.”

Mimi’s voice was serious enough that Allen deigned to give her his attention while he scraped the bottom of the bowl, stomach still demanding more. “What did she find?”

“A psychiatric hospital. Full of people with still tattoos.”

Allen went still, food forgotten.

“All of them are insane.”

Allen’s face grew still as he contemplated the implications of that. “Why do you think they’re there?” Allen asked, voice low and unhappy.

“Queri says they’re lead-up experiments to you,” Mimi said. “Most are adults. And they’re still being used. Queri’s been monitoring the area for a few days. They take a lot more taking care of than you did, which is probably why they prefered a sane result, but they’re still being taken out and possessed and returned.”

Allen felt sick thinking about it. His thoughts quickly became too tangled for him to discern, and all that was left was the hurricane and the nausea in his belly.

“What are we going to do about it, then?” Allen asked.

“We haven’t decided yet,” Mimi said carefully. “But honestly… The most humane solution I can think of is to put them out of their misery.”

“Kill them?” Allen’s voice broke halfway through, dropping to a whisper.

Mimi nodded grimly. “They can’t be taught to defend themselves like you could. Their minds are wrecked by the demons. And they can’t be fixed. I don’t see what other option we have.”

Allen made it to the back door before he threw up in Sparrow’s gardens.